Thursday night, I went to my last Bible study. They threw a mini party for me and Pete since we'll be going back home and Mark had the idea of asking us 10 questions about America. I'll miss the group.
Friday was Final Fling and the Uni Bar was PACKED. Beforehand, I went to Astrid's dorm for the "pre-party" and a girl from her dorm curled my hair before heading out. I can't use my hair utensils here, so it was nice to have it look good for more than 10 minutes.
While we were waiting in line for about half an hour, we ran into Nichole and Pete, but didn't quite make the 10:00 cut-off for getting in free, so we had to pay $6. That's a lunch!
I ran into one guy from my Aboriginal studies class who calls me America and said we need to have a going-away party, but it's not going to work out since I leave Bathurst Saturday. I have gotten several MSN screen names, though, so hopefully I'll be able to stay in touch with everyone.
Friday was the last time I was going to see Astrid before we leave, so I looked for her for about an hour before I left, but it was hard to even move around. She called me back the next morning, so at least I got to talk to her.
In the morning, Pete and I headed to Lithgow on the bus to wait on the connecting train to Sydney and passed some snow patches on the way. When we got to Lithgow, there were some people giving out free sausages, coffee and tea. Once in Sydney, we caught a flight to Melbourne, which is in Victoria, the state below New South Wales. It would've been about a 10 hour drive. (At the Sydney airport, there was a billboard for an Internet site that had a picture of George Bush on a computer and said "so easy anyone can do it" or something like that). Once there, we got a rental car and the lady handed us a big directory for getting to Peterborough. It's rather fun to get in a car and have no idea where you're going, trying to figure it out with a thick book of maps. It took us about 4 1/2 hours to get to Peterborough following the Great Ocean Road. It was dark by then so the road wasn't so great, but it was still fun. We dodged a bunch of rabbits and saw a couple of kangaroos on the side of the road on the way, and later had to let some sheep cross the road.
Around 11 or so, we finally got to Peterborough and were pretty tired since we'd been traveling since 10 in the morning. Well this place was about the size of Mayberry and the sign for "town center" led to an old playground and a dead end. Then the guy from the hostel we had booked messaged Pete and said he hoped we realized his hostel was in Peterborough, South Australia...Nope, sure didn't. We ended up driving up to a little motel - pretty much the only thing open - and booked for the night. There was some bad country-sounding live music and people dancing around in the side room. It was just like a scene from a movie - little town at night, confusing directions and a last-resort motel with shady townies. The reception people were nice, though, and the guy at the desk gave us a little carton of milk. That made no sense to me until later...
The next day, we got back on the Great Ocean Road and I must say, it's much better during the day. It was beautiful. We stopped for breakfast in Port Campbell, which is pretty nice if I say so myself. The restaurant was expensive, though. I paid $4 for toast! Two pieces of toast with little butter and honey packets. (Oh yeah, you're usually charged extra for sauce over here, like barbecue and ketchup...or "tomato sauce"). Our first stop was The Arch. There used to be a land bridge between The Arch and the coastline, but it fell in the water. It was appropriately named the London Bridge.
Next...THE TWELVE APOSTLES!!!!!!!!! That was definitely the best part because I've wanted to see them for so long. When we were walking toward the cliff, they came into view all of a sudden and I gasped and yelled, "LOOK LOOK LOOK!" My camera clicked away. I want to try to frame one of the pictures.
After that, we stopped at the Otway Lighthouse. The road to get there was quite long and there were a bunch of cows around. I'm glad we got to see a lighthouse, though, because there are a lot here and I've wanted to see one.
I stopped a couple more times to finally get a picture of a kangaroo sign and the Great Ocean Road sign, then we headed back up to Melbourne.
When we turned in the rental car, we realized the hostel was about half an hour away and had to get Skybus tickets, which weren't cheap. Then once the bus dropped us off, we walked pretty far to get to the hostel. A little while later, we went out to find dinner and stopped at Chinatown. There's definitely not a shortage of Asian food, tell you what. Most restaurants had someone standing out front to beckon people in. I felt important being beckoned. It was like a car lot. After some scrumptious sweet and sour chicken with cashew nuts, we went back to the hostel and played Uno (hahaha). I won of course ;)
The next day...let's see, we're on Monday now...we took a lot of pictures around Melbourne. It's the shopping capital and home of the largest AFL (football) stadium. Everyone was dressed nice and on lunch breaks. There were a bunch of younger kids in school uniforms walking around, too. I think I like Melbourne just as much as Sydney. There's so much more to see than in Bathurst! Although someone was shot in Melbourne last week...It was really big news because no one is ever shot here. At home, there's always a murder on the news, but here, you rarely hear about it.
One of the most impressive buildings in the city was the Victoria State Library. That sucker was humongous. It has an art gallery on one of the floors and a huge dome in the middle. There was even a room set aside to play chess, which we did. I'm really bad at foreseeing chess moves.
Oh, and we saw a Target! We didn't go in, but I took a picture.
Then we looked at motorcycles and the lady in one of the shops didn't like me. I think she thought I dropped a helmet, but it was just my water bottle. She didn't look like the motorcycle type...The hostess for a haunted house maybe. I'm serious by the way; I'm not just being mean...She was wearing one of those pointy drapey black dress things and had long, wavy gray hair.
Anyway, we had called for a shuttle to pick us up at 3:00 earlier that morning so we could get to the airport in time, but the shuttle was late. We finally made it back to the Melbourne airport and made the last call for our flight. I didn't get stopped that time though. I keep getting checked for bombs for some reason. This time, Pete was in front of me and he got stopped instead of me. These things always happen when you're in a hurry.
Back in Sydney, we had to take a train from the airport to the train station and then found out we had no way back to Bathurst. We meant to get back Monday night because I had an exam today and wanted to have Tuesday to study. The buses or trains didn't leave at the right time or no one could pick us up, so we ended up getting to Lithgow and finding another motel. The lady on the phone told Pete it was a 15-minute walk, but it definitely wasn't. It was raining and dark and took forever to get there with our luggage. It was pretty nice, though, and again we got a milk carton. I found out it's to put in your tea!
It ended up being worth it to stay in Lithgow and the next morning, we headed back to Bathurst. Yay public transportation. I must have a gazillion train, bus and plane tickets now...Because I keep them all of course.
So that's the sum of my fabulous weekend and I wouldn't change anything. Even the Peterborough hostel misunderstanding or the bitter motorcycle lady. Everything worked out and made for quite a trip.
This morning, I finished my last exam for Criminal Law and Process. I was kind of stressed because there was so much information and so many cases to know. I made 11 pages of notes to study and the exam didn't even ask about a couple of the major points. *Sigh* Is this professor humor? I studied before Melbourne, on the train and the day we got back, but probably needed to study about half that much. The exam was five essays to complete in three hours and since my last one was four essays and took the entire time, I was afraid I would run out of time and wrote fast, but ended up finishing an hour early. That's always a perk. Keep your fingers crossed.
I've also been trying to sell my textbooks. I posted them on the school forums and on Ebay, but apparently I'm banned from Ebay now. I don't know what happened, but they said there was inconsistency in my account or something. They made it sound so harsh...Like "you're never welcome here again, so there." Geez, there must be support groups for this kind of thing. I have found someone to buy one of my books, though.
So now I'm down to three days until I leave Bathurst for Sydney. I'll probably write before I leave. Nichole and I will be staying with Charlie and we're planning to go to CSU's frisbee tournament while we're there. Pete is trying to get me to play, but I don't think so. I told him we would make signs and bring noise makers.
Last but not least, Transformers comes out here tomorrow. I can't believe something is out here first!
No comments:
Post a Comment